


sort all the world out

by robinsegg



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Autistic Tsukishima Kei, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Other, just two funny little fellows falling in love, or maybe this doubles as a getting together fic?, theyre silly. theyre silly!, this doubles as a character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28355685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robinsegg/pseuds/robinsegg
Summary: Yamaguchi is brave today, he registers. This matters because now Yamaguchi is holding his hand in theirs, stroking their thumb slowly across his knuckle. This is new. Bold print, black ink. He doesn’t know where to put the swoop in his stomach when he registers the look on Yamaguchi’s face, crooked smile matching a blush splayed across their cheeks.or: tracking the feelings of Tsukishima Kei across the tundra of repression.
Relationships: Tsukishima Kei/Yamaguchi Tadashi
Comments: 8
Kudos: 55





	sort all the world out

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hi hello, this is a fic I've been working on for a while, just a short-but-also-stupidly-long-for-what-I'm-trying-to-say fic about Tsukki, his feelings, and his feelings for a one Yamaguchi Tadashi.
> 
> Some notes: Tsukishima is autistic in this! In this fic, that's a huge driving part behind his thought processes, his understanding of his emotions, and a lot of his own internal turmoil/strife. Less importantly, since he doesn't show up as much, Kageyama is also autistic. Also, Yamaguchi is nonbinary in this! Just because :P
> 
> If you read this, thanks, and I hope you enjoy it.

Kei likes to organize the world. He has a fantasy of the world up in boxes, like on Moving Day, all the cardboard decorated with his specific method of organization-- A for the Paleozoic era, CD for his memories of his first year at the Karasuno Volleyball Club, and so on. The senses are important. He knows how to sort the new ones, spent an afternoon putting things into Se once when he was 12.

The house he is moving into, or maybe out of, is quiet, muffled by the igloo of boxes he’s found himself situated inside, or maybe silenced by its emptiness, all the buzzing of trinkets and items gone from view. It is a nice house. There are curtains Kei has decided to keep up, white and blustering in the open window. Outside, his house that is the world opens up to a long long long road, and there is nothing on either side of the road besides the stars and the moon and in the far far far distance a blink that could one day, possibly, be a planet. Jupiter, with her angry sighs, or Saturn with her homebound rings. The road, in any case, goes on forever. It doubles back and it twists off into some far off outer base that Kei will never go to.

This is what Kei imagines when everything around him is Too Much. He closes his eyes and enters the white house with white walls and white curtains and gathers up all the things around. There is a pile of cardboard in the corner, there are boxes already open, some are overflowing, and it is his job as steward of the house to clean it all up, to make it neat. Someone might need to move in one day, after all. He grabs the noise on the counter, a tangled mess of notes and notation and mouths that stretch out into wires and shoves it inside its own box labeled Se1. The movement in front of him is folded into Se3, right next to force of motion, and so on. The world is broken up into easily digestible parts, like the plates with sections for food his mother got him because Kei wouldn’t eat if his food was touching, and he can open his eyes again.

This is what he does after the Shiratorizawa match. Yamaguchi has informed him that was a Good Day, and Kei extrapolates as a result that he is Not Allowed to self-combust, so he does this. In the bathroom Yamaguchi’s voice is sorted into SeI, underlined, and the motions they make are organized in FI, underlined as well, and the water dripping down Kei’s face is put into SeU.

“You’re an idiot, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi fumes, and slams the door. Kei is shocked back into life by the knowledge that this is a new emotion directed at him by Yamaguchi. He replays the curl of their lips and the slits their eyes became for just a second and registers it as anger, but not the same anger as that of the Shinzen training camp. Anger tinged with exasperation, maybe, like the anger of his coaches and teammates when he won’t eat the right servings or enough food. An exhausted anger, but one from care nonetheless. As Kei walks out, adjusting his glasses, he sorts that moment into something different. Leaves it out on the table, maybe. So he doesn’t forget to examine it when he gets home.

*

Yamaguchi is his favorite person. This was an easy decision to make once Akiteru had been boxed away, an easy decision because Yamaguchi is the only person he can bear to see when capital-T Things are happening. He wonders, maybe, if that is a bad thing.

“Lemme see your phone?” They ask, pitching up their words at the end to make it a question. They’re on the bus ride back to Karasuno and Kei thinks he might combust, but maybe in a good way. Yamaguchi is brave today, he registers. This matters because now Yamaguchi is holding his hand in theirs, stroking their thumb slowly across his knuckle. This is new. Bold print, black ink. He doesn’t know where to put the swoop in his stomach when he registers the look on Yamaguchi’s face, crooked smile matching a blush splayed across their cheeks. He thinks they meant to make that casual. He thinks they don’t realize how much their touch makes him come apart at the seams.

Wordlessly, Kei pulls out his over-ear headphones and hands off his phone. He had to let go of Yamaguchi’s hand to do so, though, which left him unmoored, for all that it was a new sensation. Kei wanted to hold their hand again, if only to see how long that swoop in his stomach would last. Attempting to appear casual, he goes to dig through his bag. (His other headphones, bought only for occasions like these, are in his pocket, as they always are.)

When Yamaguchi hands back the phone, Kei plugs them in and hands off the left earbud to them. He presses play without looking, as he always does when Yamaguchi wants to show him a new song, and settles down to listen.

It was a nice song, he thought. A little weird in a good way, the girl’s voice rough and homey in a way he liked. It wasn’t the kind of music Yamaguchi listened to. They usually listened to electronic music, tiny one or two minute snippets of songs that felt cut off but _no, Tsukki, they’re really that long, that’s the style, but it’s not for everyone!_ It made him anxious-- he didn’t know why. He didn’t know what kind of mystery he was looking to see unraveled by this song. Maybe, he thought. Maybe it was just a nice song that they liked.

“Sometimes I can see you messing up your brain right in front of me, Tsukki.” Yamaguchi said, their voice quiet. Kei found himself strangely unkempt, disturbed by Yamaguchi’s voice interrupting the singer just as her voice started to crack on the higher notes. It was a weird thing to say, made weirder by their apparent unselfconsciousness. He didn’t know what it meant.

They were looking at him, eyes wide and soft and kind of- calculating, maybe. Like they’ve got him figured out. There’s an itch he gets, an uncomfortable feeling that makes him want to scratch at his knuckles. Had Kei been unfair to Yamaguchi, forcing them to puzzle out him and his strangeness in their pursuit for a friend?

Too late, Kei replies, “You don’t usually listen to this stuff,” eyes darting down to where Yamaguchi’s finger twirls around the headphone cord. They’ve got bandaids wrapped up around the tips of their fingers, the back of their hand, calluses mapping out new topography Kei had been too out of the loop to notice. He wonders, passingly, if they’ve been taking care of their hands. He wonders, for a longer moment, if it was creepy to want to pull off all the bandages and just look and look and look, for however long it took him to put this new Yamaguchi to memory, to make sure they couldn’t hide all the new people they were becoming, all the memories they’d made without him that had gathered like dust and coalesced into cuts and scrapes and aches and pains they surely found satisfying, if Kei knew them at all.

“No, but you do.” Yamaguchi frowned. “Do you not like it? I can change the song, if you want.” He darts his eyes back up, but they’d already noticed, drawing their hand back. Discomfort scratches at his chest like a boar. He hadn’t minded seeing Yamaguchi wrapped up in his things.

“I like it.” Kei says, and they brighten, smile sliding slow across their face. The conversation dies there, as it tends to in these strange moments. For once, Kei doesn’t want it to end like this. “It’s- warm.” He doesn’t look at their expression but turns his head away, closing his eyes and willing away the burn on his cheeks, bright like a brand.

*

And then there are other games, and the Nekoma match, and, of course, the Kamomedai match. The Kamomedai match where Kei proved himself to finally, finally, care so much he’d break his body for this stupid, strange game, which is the only way to show you care, clearly. Proven by Hinata and Daichi and Yamaguchi, with their calluses and endless work and physical pain. Pain, like some kind of checkpoint-- here’s where you get to say you care, here’s where people believe you.

And it’s funny because Hinata is strange around him after the Kamomedai match. And Hinata is- always strange, Kei thinks. But now he stares at him like Kei is a puzzle to unravel, and he doesn’t know why it’s only-- now, that Hinata would look at him like that. As if he wasn’t _really_ competition before, not like Kageyama was competition. As if Hinata treated his competition differently. It freaks him out, frankly. So Kei avoids him, more than he already does, but Hinata finds him anyway. Stares at him as he eats one day and Kei tries his best to ignore him. Yamaguchi wasn’t there for lunch, at some study group for a test soon, and that annoyed him more than it should’ve. They were much better at the small conversations than Kei was, but more than that they were good at distracting people.

Eventually Hinata says, when Kei pulls out a book, “You’re so weird, Tsukishima.”

He squinted his eyes. “And this is coming from a freak like you?” He snarks half-heartedly, not looking up from his book. He’d considered being offended for a few moments before concluding that was too much work. And anyway, Hinata probably didn’t mean anything by it, considering the amount of times he’d seen him get called a freak/weirdo/some other variant of that.

“I’m not going to be offended by that,” Hinata declares loftily, stealing a pen off his desk to twirl around his fingers. Kei resists the urge to snatch it back. “You just remind me of Kenma sometimes, is all.”

“You call your boyfriend a weirdo?” Kei drawls, looking down at him with an arched eyebrow.

“Well, I’m nicer to him. I don’t like you, you asshole.” Hinata glares. He sort of wants to ask why Hinata has so doggedly followed him to sit silently during lunch, if that’s the case. But Kei had given up on Hinata making any kind of sense long ago, and stays silent in hopes the conversation will peter out and he’ll get bored, or something. Which isn’t likely, when he has something to puzzle out but- well. One could dream.

“And, I mean,” Hinata says, digging dark, heavy lines across his notebook page, “we’re not like the others, yeah? So it’s not really the same if I’m calling you a weirdo.” He stares up at Kei, eyes flashing with that sharp, strange look that sometimes came to him. It wasn’t one Kei often found himself on the receiving end of, and he didn’t at all like it.

He bristled. “What’s that supposed to mean?” He asks, nose scrunched up and eyes glaring.

Hinata laughs, bright and easy. “You’re like an angry cat sometimes, Tsukki. I’m just saying that the other teams talk about us and- and Kageyama different from how they talk about the others. I mean,” he sighs, “it’s not our first time getting called freaks, y’know? They can tell. I wonder what tipped them off.”

Kei tries not to shiver at his bland, unsurprised voice. “I don’t get called any of that,” he responds stoically, hands pressed up together for 2, 4, 8 seconds. Hinata looks up from the rhythmic scraping to give him an unimpressed look.

He’s lying, of course. Kei had been just in earshot of Yamaguchi defending him from their peers enough times to know that even if the idiot duo got called freaks to their faces, he was getting called a freak behind his back. But Hinata didn’t have to be so- so open about it. There was nothing honorable about scraping out your insides for someone else to see.

“It’s just that, well,” Hinata continues, and Kei can tell this is one of his Long Rants that only circle back to his original point five to twenty minutes later. As if he needs no validation by the others around him to continue being a nuisance, which sounds about right for his track record. “Kenma’s autistic, and-” Oh. Strange segue.

No one has ever seen Kei as anything besides gay. He’s well aware of that. At best, he’s maybe labeled “Not Straight,” and everyone leaves it at that. He remembers being young, trying desperately to hide whatever it was that made his parents whisper, that made his brother tell him strange things about accepting him. He’d do it through high marks on his schoolwork and good form in volleyball and a single-minded determination to whatever task his parents set upon him, whether it was taking out the trash or helping plant flowers in the garden. And then- well. He stopped doing that, obviously.

It didn’t work anyway, he thinks. Because his mother has always seemed to look at him with sad eyes and always seemed to talk to him as if he’d have it hard in coming years and he just knows that they know. He knows that something about his childhood self screamed “homo,” just like something about him has always shoved him far apart from the rest of the world. He’s smart and he’s tall and intimidating and a great deal mean, but he doesn’t understand shit about how others see him besides that, not really. It humiliates him, but Kei still doesn’t know why people see him as gay, even if he is. 

He doesn’t know why he’s always been labelled strange, and a freak, and Just Not Right. Even if he is.

He doesn’t get it, why it’s so easy to see that he’s not right. Not just the gay thing, but- everything else. It’s not like he doesn’t try to be normal, only fidgeting in the most understated ways and masking much of what he’s identified as freakish. It’s the most frustrating thing in the world. Because he doesn’t get it. Locked off from a piece of himself by no fault of his own, just the crime that he could never be both voyeur and spectacle at the same time. Kei wants to grab Yamaguchi sometimes, sit them down and just- ask. _What is it that makes me a freak?_ He wonders how they would respond. He wonders if they would be truthful.

Kei has to make the conscious effort to keep holding onto his book, resisting the urge to lace his fingers together and squeeze tight. He hasn’t registered a single other thing Hinata has said. “Should you really be telling people about that?”

Hinata rolls his eyes, and Kei resists the urge to punch him. “Kenma says he doesn’t care who knows, Tsukishima, and I wouldn’t just tell anyone. I’m not, like, evil.” And Kei opens his mouth to respond, maybe with something cutting or angry or panicked, something that would clearly tell Hinata _you’re on the money! You’re right on the money and I hate it, I hate that even when I’m hard to read I’m easy to understand! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck-_

He would give anything to see himself from the outside. To study himself under the microscope.

The emotion is Terror. Or Panic. Or- and this is the most humiliating one- Desperation. But then the lunch period ends without Kei saying a word, and Hinata rushes off, probably to fail another quiz because he’s too busy dreaming about volleyballs, oblivious to the distress Kei’s found himself overwhelmed by.

*

Speaking of volleyball. Volleyball practice as a second year is strange. Their first year began with Kei stagnating while Yamaguchi reinvented themself, the two of them in wildly different places. Their second year was different. Of course, maybe that was because Yamaguchi had finally gotten through to him. Kei balances on equal footing next to them, no longer a dead weight. He wonders sometimes if people think Yamaguchi is a dead weight. 

Kei doesn’t like to be watched, he learns. He registers the feeling as Discomfort. Because now it’s not just Coach watching him as that frustrating first year, looking to break through to him. It’s Kei after being broken through, snapped in half and emerging from that shell into something more- palatable, he knew. The person that fell on the court and still yelled for Yamaguchi to keep the game going. Something similar to Hinata and Kageyama, which was the worst insult imaginable. Maybe because it was true. It was the two of them, wasn’t it, who had fallen on the court. So Coach watches him, and so does Ennoshita, and even, at times, Tanaka, who Kei didn’t think was capable of being observant about anything. He likes it least when Nishinoya watches, because Noya likes to yell things out.

The practice after Kei finds himself all out of sorts, Coach Ukai calls his name out and Kei considers pretending he didn’t hear until Yamaguchi nudges his arm. “Don’t worry,” they say, more for his benefit than theirs. “I have work tonight anyway.” And Kei thinks, because of course he does, because what is his second year if not one where everything is turned on its head and left is right and up is down, that Shimada Mart wasn’t so far out of his way, and surely Yamaguchi could’ve waited for him? In any case, Kei just nods.

Coach smiles at him in a way that makes Kei suspicious. It’s a crooked, small grin, as if there’s a joke he doesn’t plan on telling. Usually when you’re smiling like that, the joke’s staring you in the face. He thinks, maybe, Coach is trying to be approachable. It’s not working, even though it usually does. Kei thinks that this is possibly because of his Bad Day.

“Tsukishima, if there’s anything ever affecting you, you can come talk to us- me or Takeda,” he begins, and things begin to reorient in Kei’s mind. Yamaguchi left so easily because they knew this would probably happen, because Kei was obvious, not just to his best friend but all of the team, and the coaches. They knew he would probably want to be alone for the conversation, or maybe the aftermath, or maybe the rest of his life. He thinks, as he squeezes his hands together, that maybe they were wrong. Maybe he would’ve liked Yamaguchi nearby.

A few missed serves, some bad blocks. A little too much time spent cleaning up. Kei hadn’t realized he was so obvious. He keeps his eyes trained on Coach, watching a strange look flash across his face. 

“Sorry-” he starts, but is cut off.

“I’m not telling you this to get an apology. I just want you to know that when things are affecting you and your performance we want to know what we can do about it.” Kei nods a little, a mindless reaction, but the thing is he doesn’t know. His needs tend towards the self-soothing, not group therapy.

That’s rude. He knows it’s rude, but still. Even if Kei did need help, what would he even ask for? He wouldn’t even be able to start thinking without feeling humiliated. It was just an off day. So he nods, and makes sure they’re making eye contact when he says, “Thank you, Coach. I appreciate you talking to me about this.”

*

Sometimes Kei wished he was a girl. Or- not to turn into a girl, but that he had been born one already, with bells and whistles and everything. He wouldn’t have to want for anything because it embarrassed him to want things, and anyway he didn’t even want to be a complete girl, because when he liked boys he was a boy, but when he liked Yamaguchi (which he always did) he was something else. Because when he liked Yamaguchi his clothes didn’t fit right and his hair seemed to stretch the back of his scalp and his hands hurt when they rubbed against each other. And maybe if he’d been born a girl it would’ve been easier to be—good. For his mother, and his brother, and Yamaguchi.

Kageyama sits next to him on one of these days, one of these bad turned to worse days where his skin feels like an ill-fitting outfit. “Yamaguchi is going to be captain next year,” he says without preamble.

Kei, in turn, stares at him incredulously. “We’ve barely started our second year, king.” Kageyama glowers at the name, as he always does. It makes Kei grin, sharp and satisfied. It was so easy to get under his skin.

“It’s not going to be you or Hinata,” and Kei laughs at that, a short, frustrated but not really gasp of air that has Kageyama squinting at him. “And it won’t be me. So it’ll be Yamaguchi. He’ll be a good captain.”

Kei looks at him. “What does that have to do with me?” He asks, head leant on his knees. Already, Kei is tired of this conversation, and Kageyama’s unshakeable solidity, weirdly comforting and familiarly irritating all at once.

At that, Kageyama looks away, eyes trained on the volleyball in his lap. “Who do you think is going to be vice?” He asks, voice small.

He feels a strange lightheadedness take over, incredulity at the fact that Kageyama wants to ask Kei this, of all people. He wonders, for a second, if the King thinks they’re friends. Then, a little more horrified, he wonders if they _are_ friends. It’s not like he had any friends outside of volleyball, anyhow, and he saw the idiot duo a little more than he was comfortable with. Yamaguchi and Yachi were, probably, his closest friends—and Hinata and Kageyama were a close second.

Unbidden, a memory comes to him.

He sits next to Yamaguchi on the grass of his backyard, not much in his mind besides wondering if they’d have time to stop by the convenience store before it gets too dark out. Kei liked days like this best, the ones where you couldn’t even conceive of anything interesting happening, they were so mundane. And it made him warm to think that Yamaguchi would still be excited to see him, when they’d done barely anything at all.

“Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says abruptly, jarring Kei out of his idle thoughts. “I don’t think I’m a boy.” They turn their eyes, scared and nervous, onto him, and he resists the urge to squirm. 

Kei feels a wobbly feeling in the back of his throat, something half alive and not quite formed. He nods his head, eyes wide, and hopes that Yamaguchi isn’t expecting him to say anything, mind all turned around. 

“It’s just that I’m really scared, Tsukki,” They start, curling in on themselves slightly, and Kei realizes he might have fucked up a little bit. “Because I’m not a boy but I’m also not like, I don’t want to be a girl, not really, and if I’m not a boy and I’m not a girl then what even am I, and how do I feel better? My body feels like this weird, fucking, big tangled up mess sometimes, like it’s not even mine, and I don’t know how to make that better. I don’t want people to call me a boy. But I’m scared that I’m a freak.”

As Yamaguchi continues to ramble, Kei begins to put things into boxes again, shoving everything into a side room. Maybe the guest room. Voices and sounds of breathing and the glare of the setting sun, all in boxes, all gone. And then he has space in his mind, once all the noise is gone. He knows what they’re saying is important, and he’s listening, he’s really trying to, but he needs to think about what to say.

Instead, Kei puts his hand on their knee and squeezes. Hard. They yelp, more surprised than hurt. “You’re not a freak,” he says, firmly. Then, a little more embarrassed, he reiterates, “You’re fine.” That should be enough. He hopes it’s enough. 

Yamaguchi seems to deflate after a second, and Kei registers the lightness on their face as Relief. He creeps closer, and tries to finally catalogue the feelings in his throat. Among the gladness twisting around the pulsing mass, he thinks he registers disappointment. More at himself, that Yamaguchi still gets nervous around him. Kei doesn’t know how to let them know they can’t fuck this up. That he’s been in it for the long run since they were small. He probably loves them, just a little bit. Another box to go up against the wall.

Kei puts his life into boxes. That’s what he does. That’s how he lives, and keeps living.

So when Kageyama asks him that, he puts things into boxes, as he always has. And he says, trying his hardest to seem detached, “You, King.” He knows it’s the right answer. Probably Kageyama does too, and needs reassurance from the person who has never given it to him easily.

As expected, Kageyama looks surprised. Kei rolls his eyes. “That’s not me being nice. Hinata would be shit in a leadership position, and I’m too scary. It’s the only choice that makes sense.” And watching the wobbly smile that flashes across his face, Kei wonders if Kageyama is a little less sturdy than he appears.

But it makes sense. He’s a smart strategist, and steady enough to keep things calm on the court. Especially with Yamaguchi next to him. He’ll never say any of that, though. Obviously. He wouldn’t want the king to think they’re friends, after all.

*

The strangest part about being alive, Kei thinks, is the knowledge that this isn’t the end.

The worst thing in the world happens, and then the next day. And the next day. And the next. Everyday, Kei finds himself unmade. He puts his life into boxes, in the big drafty house that holds no sense of home, no roots planted in the earth. He looks out the window into the mirror world that is nothing like reality and tries to rearrange all the spare parts into a life that makes sense. And all he has is jagged, unconnected bits. No one could make a mask out of that, not one that was any good. 

There’s not much that he wants right now. Kei is, at his heart, simpler than anyone gives him credit for. Few needs, fewer wants. Happiness, warmth. Things being just a little easier.

Yamaguchi comes over early one day, a little more subdued than they usually are. It worries him, a niggling feeling in the back of his mind. They lie on his bed, shoulder to shoulder, and Kei surreptitiously watches them play Animal Crossing. Yamaguchi, of course, surreptitiously tilts the screen so it’s easier for him to watch.

They’re quiet for too long, and Kei gets tired of waiting. He looks away as he nudges them. “What happened,” he asks tonelessly. Immediately, they begin Scrambling. Nervousness, Yamaguchi style, never wears off even though they’ve been friends forever.

A blush spreads across their face as they fumble the device. “What do you mean, Tsukki? Nothing happened! I’m all good,” they say, in a rush. Kei tries not to let his amusement show and raises a single eyebrow. They slump with a frustrated huff, sliding down the bed until they’re staring at his ceiling.

Kei rolls his eyes and follows them. The two of them lapse into silence. He’s deliberately not looking over at them, mostly because Kei doesn’t want to really entertain what Yamaguchi looks like sat on his bed when the light streams in, and a little because he knows they don’t like to be stared at when They’re Like This. Capitalization required.

“I’m scared,” they said, and Kei makes a questioning hum. “Because I want to do something brave, but I’m nervous that it’ll ruin things. Do you know what I mean?” He thinks for a second, and nods. It’s not easy for him to be brave, they both knew that. 

“What kind of things?” He asks, and hopes it’s the right question. There’s a lump in his chest he can’t quite describe yet, a bundle of things that on the whole feels mostly like a stomachache. 

Silence again, and Kei sneaks a look over at Yamaguchi for a second. They’re chewing on their lip, and a beam of light spreads over their face. He feels horribly out of his depth.

He looks away again as they mumble, “Between us.” Kei doesn’t know what to say. More than that, he doesn’t know what to feel. He takes a moment to think, really think about what they’re saying. Could they tell him something that would ruin their friendship? Unlikely. Most everything Yamaguchi said to him tended to be right, probably because they knew him better than he knew himself sometimes. 

And vice versa. “Shut up, Yamaguchi,” he says, rolling his eyes. They couldn’t ruin things between them, they should know that by now. They _did_ know that by now. They let out a laugh, faint and ringing. It makes him feel good.

Then Yamaguchi kisses him. Yamaguchi kisses him, and Kei is somehow, incredibly, surprised. He doesn’t know what to do with the tangle in his chest, can’t even begin to attempt sorting it all out. For a moment, he freezes, unsure of what to do and how to process it. It is only when Yamaguchi pulls back, mouth scrunched up in what he has learned to label worry, that Kei can begin to put this tangle of feelings into boxes.

First, the feeling of Yamaguchi’s lips against his, the strange and soft press of their lips, tentative yet determined. Their hand against his cheek, not a new feeling but strange in this context-- the possibility of prolonged touch, of more than a brush against cheeks. He leaves all this out on the floor—he never wants to miss it, not even for a moment. The thought comes to him, like in a dream, that this is his childhood bed, and this is the room where Kei first showed them his love for strange, old things, fossils and bones and all the secrets under the earth. They were the first friend he’d had. His favorite person in the world.

Yamaguchi was tiny back then, at least that’s how Kei remembers them, small enough that when they’d fall asleep after playing in the woods, they’d barely take up any space on his bed. They’re so much bigger now. So much sturdier. And yet they still shock him, like a lightning strike making its mark.

For a moment, he isn’t there.

When Kei was younger, maybe twelve years old, he’d often venture out into the woods. Nothing worth remembering ever happened, besides the tiny moments that sneakily build up a childhood, but there was a day he remembers vividly for no real reason at all.

He’d had a Bad Day, he remembers well enough. Kei never knew how to quantify his childhood Bad Days—were they really so bad? Childhood traumas that snowballed into teenage complexes? An oversensitivity to the world around him he hadn’t yet learned to choke down? The intrusive reorientation of his understanding of everything under the sun, as witnessed by his best friend in the whole wide world?

Probably it didn’t matter. It was still bad, no matter how trivial. And as he was wont to do, he’d leave a note for his mother on the fridge (the least he could do, she’d begged him) and grab only the essentials: a blanket. On those bad days, Kei would find a tree stump or grassy patch to sit on, knees curled up to his chest, listening to nothing at all. Sometimes he’d see frogs. What he liked to do was feel small. And that was how he spent his time, until it wasn’t so loud anymore.

As Kei pulls away from Tadashi, he finds himself struck by the similarity of these two moments. Quiet, fuzzy feelings. A reinvention of the self in each movement. The warmth and comfort of remembering what it meant to evolve. Yamaguchi made his brain feel quiet. Then, as that all rushes to him, Kei, hands perfectly still in his lap, blushes bright red. Yamaguchi laughs at him and Kei wonders numbly if all the blood has already rushed to his face or if there’s a possibility of him turning even redder.

“Again,” he says, finally, a minute or two later. “Can we do that again?” To which Yamaguchi holds his hand in theirs, dragging it up to their cheek. They tilt their head a little, nuzzling into the hand Kei has tentatively curled against theirs, once given the push from Yamaguchi.

Eyes bright, they smiled up at him. He might be having a heart attack. 

The house that is the world gains a new room. He realizes that the house is a mystery, that he was not able to document all the feelings and senses and emotions that had ever existed at the tender age of twelve. It terrifies him just a little bit. Unexplored territory.

And Yamaguchi starts to hold onto his sleeve on the way to school. It’s a smaller form of intimacy, he thinks. A way for the both of them to acclimate themselves to how their relationship might exist outside of the safety of their rooms. Not, he thought, that there would ever really be a world where Kei felt comfortable enough to grab Yamaguchi’s hand in public, even if not for the whole—gay, thing. So Yamaguchi holds his sleeve sometimes and just as enthusiastically cheers him on from the sidelines and Kei, in his own way, quiet and jumbled and clumsy, tries to give back what they’ve given him, stands tall for them when they need him to. He doesn’t know if it’s working. He hopes it’s working. He really wants it to be working.


End file.
